1. yes all companies should take price in their workforce and I agree you should aim to continually train and improve employees, it will allow you to promote from within which is always a better choice.

2. layoffs are not the cause of GM’s problems. You did not mention the fact that the Unions have such a stranglehold on GM that the hourly wage of GM workers is double Toyota’s. You did not mention that Toyota does not have job banks of laid off workers collecting FULL WAGE for not working.

3. the ‘big 3′ stopped designing cars that American’s wanted as well. So on top of having horrible overhead (thanks Unions) they also lost market share to the companies that created smaller, more effecient cars.

…I came across an interesting article, What Toyota knows that GM doesn’t, while going through my daily blogs and it made me think about the millions of jobs lost and the persons who have lost their jobs over the last 12 or so months. This article really hits home for all businesses that are laying people off just to “save and little money”. Are you really saving money in the long term? I know people who have been laid off by the big mainstream companies and vow to never purchase another product or service they offer. OUCH! So the real question is, how much is saved to imitigate short-term funds lost versus long-term loses? If you found out that you were laid off and it could have been prevented, would you look at your company different?…

Answer – not much. Much of GM’s costs is to pay for the pension and health of their retirees. Maybe they were too hopeful in years gone by, and they have changed the new employess to 401k plans, but they still have the legacy costs.

Same as an airline such as JetBlue – they have no legacy costs to contain.

Can GM do a better job – hell ya, but it is not an apples to apples comparision.